Chris has a grappling tournament in a few weeks so he requested that we spend some extra time on sambo this week; we jumped right into sambo and worked a number of basic throws, back trips in two variations, sambo single leg, sitting throw, and a few more. I got to play coach and Matt and Chris did most of the work for this segment…that is ok cause I had two teeth pulled on Monday and I still was not up to rolling around.

After the sambo Chris had to leave to study for an exam. So I broke out the sashes and Matt and I worked on the navaja in conjunction with the sash. After about a half hour of going over the actions it was time for bouting. We have three bouts both using the sash and blade in unison…very very fun stuff! We spent about a half hour more going over some grip changes and basic attacks and defenses.

On Friday, Chris was out and we did some boxing…after two rounds I realized I was in no shape to box. Only four days after the dentist, getting punched in the head felt more like getting a crowbar in the face. We wisely chose to do some sambo instead.

On with the jackets for some sambo. We are on week 2 of Coach Tripp’s 16 week cycle. focusing this time on the front body drop throw standing and north south position on the ground. We also had a quick review of last weeks session on the back trip. Even with no active free rolling we were toast by the end of our grappling session.

We then brought out the Navajas for a quick review of the clinch work from last week then moved on to some work from the Mediterranean grip. We only spent about a half hour but it was productive and keeps the navaja ball rolling here in Ohio.

We then pulled out the sparth axe trainers and went over some of the actions using the head of the weapon according to Silvers material on forest bill. Lots of casting the opponents weapon to the side, up or down and thrusting and or hooking with our own. We also did a fair bit of work form the bind and when the axe heads get hooked as they will tend to do.

We ended the session going over the basics for using the Khevsurian fighting ring. Ways of gripping the ring and the four basic attacks using this tiny but painful weapon.

I recently found some nice small gears to turn into the fighting rings at a tractor supply store. Not much to this really but nice to touch on now and again especially now that I have one that I can carry.

Right into sambo. We focused on two things today, Back trip, how to do it, how to counter it, how to do it with movement etc… and the turnover using a half nelson to side control and reversals. I am following a type of lesson plan set out by Mark Tripp who is the source for most of my sambo or at least a good portion of it. Seems to work fairly well.

We also worked with the navaja today. We worked on grip changes both from hand to hand and from saber grip to ice pick. We also worked on some things from the clinch. Came up with a few variations from the material I learned from M. Loriega at ISMAC this year. Sounds like a short session but we still worked for three hours. Very good work and I can feel it.

Almost a week has passed since the latest ISMAC and I finally feel like sitting behind a keyboard and typing about it.

Always great to see the old friends and make some new ones…this year was no exception.

Things were set up different this year, less variety and more depth. I taught a six hour class on Irish arts spending two hours a day. Covering, grappling, striking and stick work, yo would think that six hours would be enough but it wasn’t. We did still get to do a fair bit of each aspect and hopefully everyone got something out of the class…it definitely was one of the best groups I had ever taught.

I taught three taster classes: Carpathian mountain axe, Boxing and Savate Basics…all three were relatively low in students but it seems that our attendance was down from previous years…economy, holiday weekend and Heavy Renn faires could have been to blame. Regardless I did get to Kick Tom Badillo so it was all worth the effort.

Needless to say with such a heavy teaching schedule, i did not have time to take many classes. i did however take James Loriega’s byond the basics of Navaja class which was another of the six hour monsters. Great class, I got to review some material that I needed review on plus a ton of new material to work on. We will be hitting the navaja pretty hard in the coming weeks.

Of course the best time at these events for me is the social time…as in years past, I ended up drinking too much and sleeping to little but it was worth it. Saturday night found several of us playing instruments and having yet another sing along, great fun.

It sounds as if Jared has some interesting plans for next year but I will let him announce them when he is ready.